Jodi and I have been getting ready for this summer’s bike tour. This year we are going to\u00a0keep it simple and ride out the driveway heading for Montreal then\u00a0Quebec City and finally back to Boston. Originally we had circled next\u00a0Wednesday as our departure date, but we are hoping to have a meeting\u00a0with a potential new client sometime next week, and another recently\u00a0new client called and asked us to do a shoot on Thursday. so we moved\u00a0our departure date back to next Friday.<\/p>\n
As usual, we haven’t ridden our bikes as much as we should this year,\u00a0so we will be starting the trip under-trained. To try to remedy that a\u00a0bit, yesterday morning we set out for an easy ride through the Blue\u00a0Hills Reservation, which is just a couple of miles from our condo.<\/p>\n
On our way there we were riding through a four way intersection with\u00a0the green light, me leading with Jodi behind me, when a driver went\u00a0around us on the left then turned right right through me. The classic\u00a0“right hook.” If I remember things correctly (the adrenaline rush is\u00a0amazing, and everything unfolds quite slowly) he hit me with his right\u00a0rear door. I remember thinking it was very important that I not fall\u00a0until his rear wheel had passed me, and somehow I managed to do that.\u00a0Jodi told me it looked like I had almost recovered control of the bike\u00a0but I eventually did fall after the car had cleared me, landing hard\u00a0on my left hip and sliding across the pavement. I remember feeling\u00a0frustrated, while I was falling, that I was not in control of how I\u00a0was going to hit the ground because it was happening too fast. I was\u00a0determined not to hit head first though, and hit with my hip first. I\u00a0did hit my head, but with my helmet on I hardly even felt it.<\/p>\n
Of course, the adrenaline was coursing through my body, and I looked\u00a0and could see that the driver was still driving, so I jumped up and\u00a0yelled at him “You better stop that fucking car!”. The car in front of\u00a0him stopped, forcing him to stop. I’m not sure he would have stopped\u00a0otherwise. When the driver got out of his car he was quite angry that\u00a0I had cursed at him, and immediately told me it was my fault for not\u00a0getting out of his way. I told him he was a moron and when the cops\u00a0got there they could explain it to him. He never did ask if I was\u00a0hurt.<\/p>\n
Pretty soon a cop was there, then the paramedics from the fire\u00a0department, and finally an ambulance. I got a ride to the hospital
\nstrapped to a back board in the ambulance. Jodi and I spent several\u00a0hours at the hospital, mostly waiting for a series of hip x-rays to
\nmake sure I hadn’t broken anything. While still at the accident scene\u00a0I was walking fine, and almost turned down the ambulance, but the
\nsmart cop nudged Jodi and Jodi told me to go to the hospital, so I\u00a0did. By the time we had spent a couple of hours sitting in the
\nhospital emergency room waiting for the x-rays, I could barely walk\u00a0any more. I’ve got some oxycodone – acetaminophen (generic Percocet) tablets for the\u00a0pain, which help a lot, but even this morning I can barely moveHopefully another day of sitting around will be enough for that to\u00a0ease so I can at least move around on my own. I turned down the offer\u00a0of crutches at the hospital, which probably would have been a good\u00a0idea.<\/p>\n
The cop came to the hospital and gave me the case number so I can get\u00a0the accident report, and told me the driver was quite taken aback when\u00a0he got a ticket. Apparently he was quite upset about the damage I had\u00a0done to his car, and was still adamant that it was my fault because I\u00a0should not have been in the road. I wish I believed he is\u00a0exceptionally ignorant, but I think there are lots of people driving\u00a0who share that belief.<\/p>\n
I wish I could understand the thought process that was going on in his\u00a0head. He knew I was there, since he moved left to try to go around me,\u00a0so what did he think was going to happen when he turned right while I\u00a0was to the right of his car? I don’t believe he consciously thought\u00a0“I’m just going to hit that guy on the bicycle with my car,” but\u00a0somehow he managed to mentally dismiss my presence and turn as if I\u00a0wasn’t there. That’s the part I’ve never been able to figure out; how\u00a0do people go from “I don’t think bicycles should be on the road” to\u00a0ignoring their presence and possibly killing another person?<\/p>\n
So, I haven’t seen the damage to my bike yet. It’s still in the back\u00a0of Jodi’s car and hopefully I’ll be moving around enough that I can
\nhelp her get it out later today. Jodi looked at it briefly and told me\u00a0there’s some minor stuff broken — the rear view mirror and the
\ntail-light — and that there is some paint missing on the top tube.\u00a0Since it is a steel frame that will need to be re-painted to prevent
\nrust. Hopefully there’s nothing else, like a bent fork or tacoed\u00a0wheel. Whether or not both the bike and I will be ready to leave by
\nFriday is a big question mark right now.<\/p>\n
The doctor told me I should be moving fairly well by tomorrow, and if\u00a0not I should come back and they would do an MRI to see if there were\u00a0any hairline fractures that didn’t show up on the x-rays. Assuming I’m\u00a0mobile I’ll go to the police station and get a copy of the accident\u00a0report, then get in touch with the guy’s insurance company. I’ll also\u00a0get my bike to the bike shop and have them go over it and write up any\u00a0needed repairs. I’ve also got to get a new helmet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jodi and I have been getting ready for this summer’s bike tour. This year we are going to\u00a0keep it simple and ride out the driveway heading for Montreal then\u00a0Quebec City and finally back to Boston. Originally we had circled next\u00a0Wednesday as our departure date, but we are hoping to have a meeting\u00a0with a potential new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}